On December 2nd 1950 the first drop of Saudi oil arrived to Lebanon via the newly constructed Trans-Arabian Pipeline, the world's longest pipeline and the largest American private investment in a foreign land. The 30inch wide structure which spanned 1213 kilometers passing through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria to end in Lebanon had required 3 years of planning and surveying, 2 years of installation, the fabrication of 256,000 tons of steel tubes, the employment of 30,000 workers, the ratification of a few national and international laws, the invention of new transportation and communication devices, and a CIA backed political coup. 33 years later, on December 28th 1983, the Trans-Arabian Pipeline Oil Company announced that it was terminating its operations and, by January 1984, the pipeline was abandoned. Today it sits hidden six feet underground; the only physical object that crosses the border of five political entities in a region that is very conscious of its demarcated lines. Over the past five years I have undergone an in depth research of the pipeline and the company that ran it. This project proposes to take the material gathered over these years and develop a series of objects, installation, performances and books that uses the Trans-Arabian Pipeline Company as both their conceptual and physical framework, a specter through which to address the economic, political, geographic and social transformations of the region from the end of World War II onwards.

This thesis lays out an argument for a model of socially engaged, public art practice that seeks to radicalize and amplify the voices of youth around the critical issues in their communities. A case study of this model is presented and qualitative findings from the experience are shared. The case study was situated in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego, California and the critical issue facing that community is air pollution created by idling vehicles waiting to cross the US / México border.

Hidden In Plain Sight: La Jolla / UTC Annex, An Edge-City is an inter-textual project (combining theoretical and historical inquiry with performative intervention and documentary filmmaking) that critically investigates the developmental landscape adjacent to the UCSD campus. Via a self-implicating and performative research methodology, the project endeavors to develop a reflexive counter-genealogy and counter-ontology of what Joel Garreau might identify and gleefully laud as "Edge City" in his seminal text of the same name. The project seeks to dissect an aesthetics of banality that conveniently occludes this and such landscape's interrelationship with structural, economic, and physical violence, and by effect works to preclude any resistant cultural response thereto. More broadly, the project endeavors to intervene in a process by which certain myths of progress and exceptionalism are upheld iconographically, in order to develop a new critical hermeneutics of the physical and cultural terrain in question.

The illustrated document submitted sets up a specific historical and geographic terrain for the recapitulation of enacted performances. The latter functions as a set of micro-case studies-out of and against which I have developed a set of theoretical and critical positions vis-à-vis the "Technopole" / "Edge City" urban typology in a characteristically Southern Californian context.

My work investigates the relationship and ceremonial practices of a traditional Pre Columbian society while moving in parallel within a modern society focusing on Oaxaca, Mexico. Through a series of inter related projects you will be shown a unique prospective of Oaxacan life and society. I have been working on a long-term project in Oaxaca, Mexico since 2009 using alternative photography methods in combination of toy cameras and digital photography. My work is a palimpsest of materials layering one image upon another. Although at first glance the information may seem unrelated there is one connecting factor: ceremonial rituals and uses.

This catalogue will cover several areas of my art practice in Oaxaca starting with several interrelated projects. The first project is the festival of San Juan Bautista in San Juan Mixtec. The second is an investigation of the ritual practices involved in daily meat production from the only slaughterhouse in the capitol. The third spans a continuous 4-year project of photographing the General cemetery in Oaxaca city, and ending with botanical studies of native and indigenous plants in the state of Oaxaca.

Tae Hwang and MR Barnadas of Collective Magpie have been working

collaboratively for almost 20 years creating public art works. On the evening of

October 13th, 2015, they spent approximately eight hours discussing transnational

project Globos. The entire conversation was digitally recorded. This is a selected

excerpt from that recording.

Tae Hwang and MR Barnadas of Collective Magpie have been working

collaboratively for almost 20 years creating public art works. On the evening of

October 13th, 2015, they spent approximately eight hours discussing transnational

project Globos. The entire conversation was digitally recorded. This is a selected

excerpt from that recording.

The project entitled Memorybabe is an ongoing studies project where my exploration of subjectivity through memory, particular that of my father George Miramontes. Memorybabe No.17: The Wrestling Project illustrates the major creative underpinnings of art’s capacity to create the conditions for intervention, resistance, and transformation. The liminal qualities in the experiencing of ‘art’ has become an important in grasping agency and action- particularly, in creating subjectivity, autonomy, and forms of social action, and combating its opposite, inaction.

What happens when a body of knowledge returns to the body from which it took off? What does it mean to study life through it's carcass?

THE THING IS ALL AROUND ITSELF considers an `island' from the perspective of Malaise, a flying insect trap that mimics the form of a human tent. The Malaise trap acts to passively involve insects by intercepting their flight path before funneling them into a bottle-neck chamber. This Thesis explores trap-setting as an alternative paradigm for artistic process, whilst the trap produced then functions as a non-euclidean frame through which to view the world - a klein-bottle space in which inside is always out.

ls utilized for the cultural production of art making. The text gives historical contexts relating to my creative development. It describes the current body of work that has been produced during earning this Masters Degree, and it projects into future projects based on this research.